MINUTEMEN, DIE KREUZEN SHIRTS NOW AVAILABLE THROUGH MY SITE.

Holy cow, there are two new t-shirts at my site! They both came out pretty cool I might add. Stay tuned for two ALL shirts, PULLEY and POLVO in the future. Thanks kids.

THE LINK:

http://brianwalsby.net/BrianWalsby.net/Home.html

FATAL ERROR: THE MISSING LINK

DRUMMER MATT CHARAPATTA OF FATAL ERROR. . FATAL ERROR were some good friends of mine while I was growing up in SoCal all of those years ago. Me and the Scared Straight guys were from Simi Valley. Fatal Error were from Chatsworth. Both towns were separated by the Santa Susana Pass, six or so miles of mountains looming from the Northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley where Chatsworth lies. Between Chatsworth and Simi Valley is Hwy 118 (now called the Ronald Reagan Freeway..no shit) and Spahn Ranch, ol’ Charlie Manson’s summer vista for getting away from it all. So now that you know exactly where everything is, there won’t be a quiz. The time period of all of this is 1984 through to the end of 1986, I think. A long time ago. FATAL started pretty much like any other band, competently played skater thrash music done by some of the most Californian people I have ever met. The initial lineup was Trey Clinesmith on guitar, Jon Palmer on vocals, Dave Munn on bass and one of the greatest drummers that no one knows of, Matt Charapatta. Trey had braces still. It seemed like these guys sort of had their own language. They really did use all of those California words, stuff like “dude” and “rad” and “shred” and all of that. They made up a few words of their own too. They were all super cool guys. And yes, they also skated. Meanwhile, I was also friends with a fellow named Ron Cerros, who was about to join FATAL for a short amount of time. They all knew each other and went to Chatsworth High. I might have met all of those guys through Ron. Ron, like the rest of the FATAL guys, was sort of a expert on hardcore. I was introduced to a lot of Dischord stuff, the Neos, and stuff like Rudimentary Peni through him. He had every record on earth and was a funny super opinionated guy who was a bit on the Crass trip. He even joined the band America’s Hardcore on bass right before that band fell apart. So I thought he sort of a big shot. The band had their only vinyl appearance on a Mystic Records compilation with Ron on board and that was it for Ron. I wonder what he is up to these days? Enter Matt Nestor and Bob Davis.

BOB, MATT NESTOR AND JON Bob Davis was the resident longhaired dude who filled in the Dez Cadena spot in FATAL, if you know what I mean. He played a White Les Paul and looked pretty cool up there onstage. He replaced Ron initially. Matt Nestor came in a bit later. Matt was another buddy of the FATAL guys, a super cool guy with perhaps a..bit more intensity to him then the rest of them. I think that him and Matt C had already been playing together in a little sideband and eventually he joined FATAL ERROR and brought in all of this new material to the band. Well, Matt Nestor sort of took FATAL to godlike status without anyone knowing about it. One day both Matts came to my house and gave me the new recordings they had done, in a real studio somewhere near San Diego. Jon was still the singer. So I think it was the first of a few three guitar lineups of the band. What was it like? Well, I was blown the fuck away. It was like everything I loved about this music in one godly package. Matt’s songs were clearly a step forward, a potent combination of breakneck thrash with a bit of the mania of maybe Void somehow meeting lots of Black Flag Greg Ginn creepy crawl guitar work and suspended pauses. There was a little bit of metal damage in some of the material but not obnoxiously so. It was still rooted firmly in hardcore. Snotty vocals, amazing fucking drumming, some dramatic time changes and some downright eyebrow raising lyrics and songtitles completed the package. That was the other real deal maker is the single-minded bleakness of the lyrics. How many times can you say that War is horrible? Well, if you are tired of that, there is still plenty of songs about plagues killing everybody (“Walk Of The Plague”), pyromania as a means of killing everybody (“Playing In The Ashes”), night terror (“Scary Z’s”), cremation (“Cremation”) , a army buddy of the band going AWOL and hanging himself (“Horizontal Friend”) and plenty of other cheery songs. One of the best songs was the band putting new music behind Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War” and letting it rip. The funny thing is if fits in perfectly with the rest of the material they had. Later on there would appear to be some light to fight off the darkness but it came in the form of songs like “I Remember Drugs” and “Cockroaches Shall”. It was so weird to look back and think that nothing seemed to happen for them. Bands like Cryptic Slaughter had records out. Mystic Records put out records by a million bands that FATAL had played parties with. The band even had what no one else had: A great sounding recording. And yet nothing. Maybe it was the bands fault, maybe not but when I listen to this stuff I am still convinced of its greatness and would think that if more people could hear it, they would dig it. It sounds like it could be a new band. These recordings are as good or maybe even better than most of whatever I have heard these days. They are sort of the missing link, the great unknown band. Or at least one of ‘em. Later on the band lost Jon as singer and Matt sort of stepped in. Another demo came. Then the band lost Dave on bass and then Matt took over bass and Simi Valley’s Mike Harder came into the band near the end as another guitarist. I had already moved out to the East Coast when all of this was going on. I don’t know why or when they called it a day but they did. And all they left were these two really awesome sounding demos from that weird San Diego studio and a small handful of demented sounding home recordings. Hopefully this will be the start of what could be the material getting out there somehow. They deserve it, and I think some people would really like it. .

from MANCHILD 2, based on a story Trey told me in a letter he wrote after I moved away!

THE GRUNGE CHRONICLES.

Courtney Love can sure spin some good yarn! This charming tale comes from the new oral history book on the "grunge scene" and I tried to make her story come alive! Maybe we can work together in the future!

Q: AND CHILDREN? A: AND CHILDREN.

MANCHILD 6, MAXIMUM ROCK N ROLL COVER STORY AND OTHER NEWS.

So I am the cover story of the October issue of MRR. it came out (I think) pretty good and overall I am pleased with how it went. If you are interested in obtaining this issue, here is the link:

and this is my cover. What else? MANCHILD 6 has been discussed and it looks as though a mr. Will Butler will be doing the honors this time, letting Charles have some breathing room and learning the subtle craft of diaper changing with his new daughter. Thematically this will be sort of a continuation of the same layout idea that the last book had, except it will be sort of a Lester Bangs type of thing: writings and interviews with new art put between the chapters. No other news on this yet but I will let you know when we get the ball rolling. Other news? Well, my feet sort of hurt..but I will be okay I am sure. Thanks.

SHINY BEAST "STOP LOOKING AT US WE'RE WAVING GOODBYE" CD OUT ON LITTLE MAFIA RECORDS.

Six years in the making and three diffirent owners later, the Shiny Beast cd is finally out on Oklahoma's Little Mafia Records.

I would like to thank Little Mafia Records for caring enough to put this out.

Who is/was Shiny Beast?

(here is a re-print from an older earlier entry:)





WHAT I CAN REMEMBER....


I remember the time when the original Shiny Beast lineup of David, Mike Meadows and myself recorded what would become the tracks for the Boner Records release, we invited our freind Mike Carden to sing on some of the songs. Mike was in the evil local band Garbageman, definitely a unsung class act of yesteryear. Mike was this intense brooding man of (usually) few words who could scream and shriek like the singers of Die Kruezen and Negative Approach. He had a serious hardcore record collection as well. When he did the singing at Jerry Kee's home studio in a residential area of Raleigh, it was maybe a hour later when the police showed up at Jerry's. The police explained that they were summoned to the place because a neighbor thought that someone was being murdered or tortured. No officers, just laying down some vocals. They soon left.



I remember one time when we were on tour with Erectus Monotone and we played at State College, Pa. It was a beautiful little town tucked away in the mountains and the show was pretty good. Some dude let us crash at what seemed like an empty bottom floor of a frat house or college rec room. Well, that was the night everyone decided to get real drunk or something. I remember bonding heavily with EM's Brian Quast that night over our mutual love of the Descendents. He was really talkative and drunk. David was out of control. When he drank he got really animated and funny, not really drunk just really wide open and excited. He got so excited he dove out of an open window, ran around sticking forks into electrical outlets to prove how he wouldn't get shocked: "See? You gotta stick both prongs into the socket to get shocked! See? SEE??" Kim told him to eat a flower that was growing out of a potted plant so he did. Everyone had a good time until there was some drunken conflict (sort of) that I wasn't really aware of and then EM's Kevin Collins got reeeeally bummed out 'cause everything had been going so well personality wise on the trip so far. Then the next morning most everybody was really hungover and quiet and no one really said much for a little while when we left town.



I remember when we played in Buffalo New York a few years later in this huge art loft near downtown. Polvo were nice enough to take us out with them on the road and this was when the band went through our "Fleetwood Mac" period. The three of us ended up sitting on a couch at the entrance drinking a twelve pack of beer. Now, this had NEVER happened before but for some reason it made sense that night. We ended up playing in this hot packed sweaty room where I played a semi drunken set that I alone really enjoyed. David and Kim less so. David had to keep re-tuning his Telecaster. People seemed to like us, some even knew about us. Afterwards some guy who looked just like Dez Cadena of Black Flag came up to us and complimented us and then offered to get us stoned. So we did. I remember Polvo played a set that melted my tiny little mind; they passed around this cowboy hat while they played. Afterwards I was still out of my tree and ended up packing up all of my stuff but stupidly left a cymbal stand at the loft. Later I enjoyed a horrible turkey sub with ranch dressing that made me throw up later on at the house we crashed at. Hooray!



I remember how I learned to get really tired of the one thing everyone yelled at us when we played, no matter where it was: "TURN UP THE VOCALS!! I CAN'T HEAR THEM!! HA HA HA!!"

Even better was the time I had a conversation with a drunk in Columbus Ohio who watched our whole set and then insisted that we had some "great singing". After the third time I denied this, he then compared the band to Rush and that David's playing was "just like Alex Lifeson". That was certainly a new one.


Mike Meadows was the first bass player. When we played our first show it was in Greensboro with Mike Carden singing. I can't stress how weird it all was..me and David had been in Willard before this and it was like this was the first time I had "met" David musically, if you know what I mean. He wrote most of our stuff. Meadows was a great player, a all around talented musician but there was this personality diffirence. Me and David were wimps. Meadows was this sort of swaggering machoish dude who would do things like walk around shirtless in the Greensboro club with some random bass that he just found there and without even asking permission would just walk around with it playing it unplugged. I don't know why that stuck out in my mind but it did. I have to say that when he wasn't in the picture it was sort of a relief...not playing with someone that you maybe wasn't sure if you liked very much but being afraid that he might get mad at you for it. We did lose something without him but gained a whole new thing in the process.

Kim literally taught herself how to play bass in maybe a month, tops. David helped her. In no time we were back in business. Kim was kind of like how it was playing with Wayne Taylor, they both played bass in this very odd way, weird stuff. Kim later on was in this Greensboro band called Taija Rae who were quite good, more of a straight forward rock thing , and she still played the same oddball way which was nice. She wrote a little bit of the music towards the end.

....yeah, we played with a lot of bands when we were one ourselves. We opened for Cop Shoot Cop once at the old Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill and they were pretty nice guys and seemed to like us even. We opened for the Melvins once when I somehow was able to get them in touch with a short lived and foolheartily ambitious booking agent that worked (breifly) at the Brewery here in Raleigh. I don't know how that one was pulled off but you could imagine how odd that was. The Melvins benfitted greatly from the Brewery's powerful p.a. (sarcasm) that night. We played our music with our rinky dink little candy ass gear and sort of held our own I guess. We played with Don Caballero a couple of times. Their drummer was..sort of a strange fellow, not very consistent personality wise and played in his underwear with his ass hanging out. Nothing you probably haven't heard a thousand times if you are familar with that band. I still like thier first record. We played with Rodan a few times and that too was really cool. We really liked them and had a good time I think. They were so much better then thier record.



Here in the Triangle we played with pretty much every band that was at least once. I remember how we played with bands like Archers Of Loaf, Superchunk and whoever else was peaking during that time when Chapel Hill exploded and eclipsed everything else. I would sort of scratch my head with a tiny bit of twisted jealousy mixed with bewilderment as I sat and tried to figure out what was going on. All of those people were basically pretty nice too. It seemed like I was the only one of us who even thought stupid stuff like this. I just couldn't pretend that I didn't already see bands like the Minutemen and Black Flag back in SoCal so I just chalked it up to that for the most part.

We opened for the "new COC" once and that was maybe the weirdest reaction that we had, or at least the most interesting. At that point, COC were into their Mike Dean-free five piece "heavy rock" period and somehow they let us or asked us to play with them at the Cat's Cradle. The reaction we got was just like the reaction the "animosity" era COC were greeted with the first time I saw them back in SoCal. They played a "crossover" show and the entire metal audience just stood there watching, unsure of what to do or how to react. Not like our band was ANYTHING like the old COC, but six or seven years later thier audience pretty much did the same thing. No one even went anywhere near the stage at all, not like they thought we sucked (well, who knows about that one). Finally, one lone headbanger went up to the front of the stage and started to furiously headbang for like twenty seconds to one of our songs. He then stopped and went back to the rest of the audience who were standing fifteen feet away form the Cat's Cradle stage. Pretty funny.

We usually ended up playing a lot with bands of the time in our area like Erectus Monotone, Orifice, Regraped, Vanilla Trainwreck and Polvo. This worked out well because we all liked those bands the best in the Triangle area. We toured with Erectus of course and that was fun. They had Brian Quast for awhile then and they were finally clicking on the road playing some furious shows in goofy locales like a pizza shop in Conneticut amongst twenty other "enlightened people". Orifice were just..a soundtrack for a absurd weird comedy..everything about them was just hilarious. We played at least seven billion shows with Regraped and those were always fine. Ben and Kip played bass and Brian Q. drummed. I wish they recorded a proper record. Vanilla Trainwreck, horrible name, inconsistent records and lengthy shows aside still could fucking kick it out. And you know about Polvo already, I guess. We all really liked playing with those bands and here is my paragraph dedicated to all of them. Good going, guys..and girls..


Little Mafia Records:

http://www.myspace.com/littlemafiarecords

VOIVOD T-SHIRT NOW UP FOR GRABS.

I am pretty darn excited to say that the VOIVOD shirt is done and ready for pre-orders. It has been really cool to be able to do these t-shirts this year and to have a chance to work with some of my favorite bands and some great people but I think this one holds a really special place in my heart. Black and white design on a grey shirt. Here is the link once again to my site:

http://brianwalsby.net/BrianWalsby.net/Home.html